FAYETTEVILLE -- People with attitudes leading them to feel less in control of their own fate are more likely to oppose mandatory vaccination policies, according to research from a University of Arkansas professor.
Geoboo Song, an assistant professor of political science, studies the link between cultural worldviews and public policy issues.
"Most surveys are going to ask about attitudes toward vaccination or attitudes for vaccination policy. But the real question is why individuals shape such attitudes," Song said.
Increasingly, Arkansans are exempting their children from vaccination requirements, with 4,353 exemptions for philosophical reasons -- instead of for religious or medical reasons -- in the current school year compared with 3,435 the previous year, according to a state Department of Health total that includes day care attendees and students at all levels, including college.
The best estimate for the state as of 2013 puts the vaccination rate for young children at 88.3 percent for measles, mumps and rubella, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reported a margin of error of plus or minus 5.9 percent. The best estimate for Arkansas is close to 4 percentage points below the national estimate of 91.9 percent and ranks among the lowest in the nation.
In recent months, an uptick in measles -- a once-common disease in the United States but 15 years ago thought to be eliminated in this country -- has led to greater attention on health authorities calling for parents to vaccinate their children.
But Song said such pleas from authorities may not have much influence.
"People tend to listen to what they want to hear and accept new information only if it conforms to what they already believe," Song said.
His study of vaccination policy preferences is based on cultural theories that people make decisions not only by weighing the costs and benefits of a particular action but also on how they relate to an individual's preferred way of life.
Using this theoretical framework, Song helped develop a 2010 Internet survey. The survey didn't poll a sample representative of the U.S. population. Questions not only referenced vaccinations but also cultural outlooks.
For example, one question asked participants to agree or disagree with a statement that, "for the most part, succeeding in life is a matter of chance."
The survey sought to highlight four worldviews: hierarchy, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist.
Song found those with a fatalist worldview -- defined in the study as perceiving life's events to be mostly random and uncontrollable -- tend to oppose a mandatory examination policy, even controlling for other factors such as knowledge about vaccinations that also might affect policy preferences.
The cultural theory holds fatalists "would tend to believe that becoming infected with communicable diseases is part of one's destiny or luck, and therefore will be skeptical of mandatory vaccine policy designed to prevent such diseases," Song and fellow researchers Carol Silva and Hank Jenkins-Smith wrote in a 2014 research article, "Cultural Worldview and Preference for Childhood Vaccination Policy," in Policy Studies Journal.
Song emphasized his neutrality in the vaccination topic.
"I don't want to take any kind of stance," said Song, adding his goal as a researcher isn't to choose a side in a debate but rather to try to understand why people support policies.
He helped develop the 2010 Internet survey while a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma, with results featured in an episode of the PBS television series Frontline that year.
Arkansas approved in 2003 a law creating the philosophical exemption from vaccination requirements. Religious and medical exemptions have long been allowed in Arkansas. Parents seeking exemptions must sign a form stating they have read information about the benefits of vaccines provided in an exemption application packet from the state Department of Health.
Song described the topic as emerging when he began to study it using cultural theory methods but noted how politicians have begun to discuss immunization policy, with possible Republican presidential candidates New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., describing the importance of parental choice in the vaccination debate.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said, "I don't understand why it's as controversial as it is," according to an article this month from The Dallas Morning News.
Huckabee went on to state "public health policy of the state should be based on the overwhelming reality that immunizations protect children from things we thought we had eradicated, like measles and whooping cough."
NW News on 02/21/2015